Voi. It ? No. yi
Lawrence January
Kansas 1945

 

ABGUT HRaAaLTE

THE DOUGLAS COUNTY HEALTH UNIT, City Hall, Massachusetts Street, at
llth, functions daily from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Come in and tell
us your troubles.
NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

THE advice offered at this place last year is still good. Make your
resolutions with calm deliberation and then keep them. At least one
should have something to do with health.

DIPHTHERIA
(Dif-not Dip)

DIPHTHERIA is an acutely infectious and contagious disease endémic
everywhere. Even at the worst, it is never pandemic. This means that
it is "on the people" all the time but not "all the people” have it
at any time.

It is caused by the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, but there are obscure and
mystifying facts and circumstances involved that make the understand-
ing of diphtheria and its management in the community extremely diff-
icult. There are similar and related organisms that are not pathoge-
nic, i.e. they do not make people sick. Some people have a natural
immunity so high or great that they can carry around and occasionally
scatter about virulant organisms without themselves being ill. These
"carriers" are always found in every region and are the main reason
why the disease is "endemic",

Very young children rarely have this disease and the mature are also
practically immune though no age is entirely oxempt. About half of
all the mortality is in ages two to ten, the other half is widely dis-
tributed over the other parts of life. Contrary to what applics in
most other contagious diseases, the incidence is greatest in the
country children and the carefully extlusive well to do and least in
the slums and most dense and well mixed parts of the population.

Perhaps the most characteristic of all the signs and symptoms of diph-
theria is the false membrano that it causes or is part of it. In

this region, few if any cases have been reported without this membrane,
but careful studies of several hundred bodies, dead of diphtheria,
showed that only a few over half of them had any membrane anywhere.
When present, the membrane may bo almost enywhere, but is most common
in throat, nose and larynx. Fresh wounds, and the like are now rarely
seen infected, though it is still possible.

Many people have written large books on bacteriology without getting
it all told, so this paragraph does not attempt to tell it all. Let
me make two points, (a) bacteria do harm by substances that are callod
toxins, (b) some toxins are called loose, soluble, or exotoxins,